Welcome to another installment of 31 Days of Halloween! This is our chance to set the mood for the spookiest and scariest month of the year as we focus our attention on horror and Halloween fun. For the month of October we’ll be sharing various pieces of underappreciated scary books, comics, movies, and television to help keep you terrified and entertained all the way up to Halloween.
Halloween is fast approaching, and AHOY Comics has got readers covered for the spooky season. Coming out of Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror, the newly re-branded Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Blood begins the third volume in the series. Don’t fret over the name change, though, as issue #1 promises to be yet another “all-star snark-fest under a bloody new title.” Contributors this time around include writer Paul Cornell, artist Russell Braun, and artist/writer Dean Motter.
In the lead up to the issue’s #1 debut on October 21, we spoke with AHOY’s editor-in-chief Tom Peyer about the book, more changes to expect, and other delightfully spooky tidbits.
A page from issue #1. Courtesy of AHOY.
Read our review of Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Blood #1 here.
AIPT: Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter no longer contains terror but instead blood. What was the reasoning behind this tangible and gory name change?
Tom Peyer: We added “Season Two” to the logo of the second series of Snifter of Terror, and it slowly sunk in that this was a good way to deter new readers. Nobody starts reading or watching anything with Season Two. It’s like shaking the new reader and yelling, “Go away, you can’t join our gang!” The irony is, new reader, you can join our gang! We want you. And it’s an anthology, so you can start reading at any point. So from now on we’re going to differentiate POE series by changing the contents of the snifter. It could be filled with fear, or skeletons, or eyeballs, or spiders. Or adventure!
AIPT: We’re always expecting more with AHOY books, but what should readers expect with this new series of Snifter of Blood?
TP: Some really good art and a few laughs. Mark Russell and Peter Snejbjerg have this series of interconnected stories about the monsters you see on cereal boxes, and we have one of those in #2. The first issue has this beautiful Jill Thompson cover and a funny adaptation of “The Black Cat” by Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell and The Boys artist Russell Braun. Every issue has two stories, plus some prose fiction or poetry in the back. It’s a comic you can spend some time with.
A page from issue #1. Courtesy of AHOY.
AIPT: Do you have a favorite Poe story? And more importantly has it seen any kind of adaptation into the Snifter yet?
TP: My fave hasn’t been a Poe comic yet: Masque of the Red Death. I’d like to write it myself if I can figure out a way to make it funny. If you know the story and you know what’s happening in the world right now, you know how impossible this would be.
AIPT: With Halloween approaching, has anyone that’s contributed to EAPSOT experienced any spooky goings on after publication in the Snifter?
TP: Yes, strangely, we all had this Masque of the Red Death experience where there was a deadly plague throughout the land and the 1% thought they could wall themselves off from it. Spooky!
AIPT: For possible real-life horror, as ediot-in-chief at AHOY, what was it like working through the pandemic era?
TP: Comic book professionals are used to working at home in their bathrobes and going for months without seeing anyone. Clearly, we’re the ones to lead humanity through this crisis!
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